The Sanskrit Drama in its Origin, Development, Theory & Practice c20.s5.8

c20.s5.8

In Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka¹ we find yet a different point of view, which denies either the production (*utpatti*) of sentiment, its perception or apprehension (*pratīti*) or its revelation (*abhivyakti*). If sentiment is perceived as appertaining to another, then it cannot personally affect oneself. But it cannot be perceived as present in oneself as a result of study of a work about Rāma; there are no factors present in the self to produce any such result; it is impossible to hold that an emotion dormant in oneself is called to life by seeing or reading the story of Rāma; experience shows that one's own beloved does not come up to one's mind to raise love, nor could a tale of a goddess evoke the picture of a mortal amour; again, such marvellous deeds as Rāma's have nothing common to mortal efforts so as to be able to awake conceptions of acts of our own. Thus sentiment cannot be apprehended. Nor is it a case of production; if so, no one would go twice to a play of a pathetic type, since one would experience actual misery as the result, in lieu of a pleasant melancholy; again the sight of lovers united does not in real life produce sentiment. Nor is a case of the revelation of something existing potentially (*çakti-rūpa*). If this were so, then, when the potential emotions were let loose, they would occupy their field of action in diverse degrees—thus contradicting the nature of sentiment as one; moreover there would be the same difficulties as in the case of apprehension as to whether revelation applied to the hero or oneself. The true solution, therefore, is to ascribe to a poem a peculiar threefold potency of its own, the power of denotation (*abhidhā*), which deals with what is expressed, the power of realization (*bhāvakatva*), which relates to the sentiment, and the power of enjoyment (*bhojakatva*), which has regard to the audience. If denotation were all, there would be no difference between poetic figures and manuals, there would be absence of the distinctions produced by divergence of literal and metaphorical sense, and the avoidance of harsh sounds would be needless. As it is, we have the second function of realization of sentiment, which causes the expressed sense to serve as the basis of the sentiment, and confers on the determinants, &c., the essential feature of being appropriated by the audience as universal. From this comes the appreciation by the audience of the sentiment, an appreciation consisting in a mental condition made up entirely of the element of goodness or truth (*sattva*), uninfluenced by the other elements of passion (*rajas*) and dullness (*tamas*), that is, entirely free from desire, comparable with meditation on the absolute. This condition is the vital element; the enjoyment ranks above the aesthetic equipment¹ which renders it possible. To this theory which is sometimes ascribed to the Sāmkhya,² and called the Bhuktivāda, doctrine of the enjoyment of sentiment, the objection is made that the two powers ascribed to poetry, realization, and enjoyment, have no legitimate foundation.